Modern aircraft contain visual display systems that provide pilots and/or flight crews with substantial amounts of important navigation, operational and situational awareness information including information about the environment and terrain outside the aircraft. In fact, multi-functional aircraft displays can provide flight crews with computer-enhanced three-dimensional perspective images of terrain especially during conditions of low visibility. These images can include three-dimensional background and terrain information as well as graphics that represent pitch reference lines, airspeed, flight path information, altitude, attitude, etc. In some implementations, the terrain imagery of the background can be high resolution, computer-generated terrain image data derived from databases and onboard vision sensor systems.
One problem with visual displays for aircraft is that the flight path of the aircraft and the perspective of the flight display may deviate significantly. This is particularly true for helicopters and other roto-aircraft. Typically, the flight display system will transition its' perspective to align with that of the true flight path of the aircraft. However, sudden changes in the displayed perspectives may lead to pilot disorientation. Hence, there is a need for a system and method for adjusting the correlation between a visual display perspective and a flight path of an aircraft.